


Dreaming in the Labyrinth

by startraveller776



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23342272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startraveller776/pseuds/startraveller776
Summary: A collection of detailed plots of stories I'm not going to write based on prompts and challenges I've received on Tumblr. All of them feature the pairing of (adult) Sarah Williams and Jareth. Various genres and ratings. Any pertinent warnings are in each chapter. PERMISSIONS: If one of these zany ideas sparks your muse, you totally have my blessing to write the story. All I ask is that you link me when you post it!
Relationships: Jareth & Sarah Williams, Jareth/Sarah Williams
Kudos: 10





	Dreaming in the Labyrinth

**SPACE AU + MAGICAL ACCIDENTS**

You know those movies that were popular in the 90′s with the world coming to an end, either because of a meteor or volcanoes or a second ice age? Yeah, so that’s happening about 10 years after the events of _Labyrinth_. The Aboveground and the Underground are connected, though the underbelly of Earth and its inhabitants have mostly passed out of mortal memory. So, if Earth is coming to to an end, it is for the magical creatures, too.

A meteor has struck the planet, despite humankind’s best efforts. It’s causing a all kinds of extinction level issues. The weather has gone all wonky, volcanoes are popping up in odd places, the polar ice caps are melting, earthquakes and all that terror-inducing stuff. The denizens of the Underground, having separated themselves from the humans for thousands of years, have no bogging idea what’s happening. Only that that their world is falling apart and the Girl Who Ate the Peach And Forgot Everything—the only one who has ever had power to tear down the kingdom—has’t been seen in a decade or two. (It’s hard to tell. Time moves differently there.)

But here’s the thing: the magic of the Labyrinth is sentient, ancient—maybe even older than the world itself (though nobody knows or remembers). She’s got a killer sense of self-preservation, and she isn’t about to be vanquished by some global disaster. Neither will she let the creatures bound to her be obliterated. Jareth can feel it beneath his skin, the Labyrinth buzzing with a mounting _something_ that he can’t name. He knows it has something to do with whatever’s happening Above, so he goes for a visit in his owl form. What he finds is pandemonium, the beginnings of an apocalypse like he’s never seen before. (And he’s witnessed plagues and terrible wars.)

Sarah is doing her best to survive with her family. Initially there was just a regular panic where people inexplicably hoarded toilet paper, but as it became clear that there was nothing to be done to prevent the end of the world, governments broke down, anarchy has reigned since. Fortunately, her dad’s mid-life crisis a couple of years ago manifested in an obsession with survival preparation. (He might have been a little too into Bear Grylls.) She and Toby whined about all the camping trips and food storage and having to refresh their 72-hour-kits every year to make sure the supplies were up to date—and the hours at the shooting range, learning the bow and arrow, learning how to throw knives as well as use them. They aren’t complaining now as they hide out in the forests of the Northwest to avoid roving bands of scavengers. Yes, their future is bleak, but they’re all determined to survive as long as Earth still stands.

Back in the Underground, that buzzing beneath Jareth’s skin is growing to a crescendo. He feels weak, like his strength is being wicked away, and it’s not only him. All of the magical creatures of the Underground are being zapped. It builds, builds, builds until BAM! The Labyrinth unleashes a magnificent amount of force, knocking out everyone Below.

There’s a huge flash that lights up the entire world at once, and once it clears, there’s something gigantic hovering in the sky. It’s not like anything anyone has seen before. Kind of like a spaceship but made out of stonework—tans, yellows and oranges—instead of metal. A week, and then another passes with this giant thing in orbit. What’s left of NASA tries to make contact, but there’s no response. More panic ensues. The world is ending and now an alien invasion? The Williams’ keep their heads down and focus on staying alive. 

Jareth and others in the Underground are recovering from whatever the Labyrinth did. No one knows. Everything seems to be in order, but something just feels off to Jareth. His unease grows further when he discovers he can no longer transport Above. The Labyrinth has walled herself off, and while that’s well and good, Jareth thinks she doesn’t understand the magnitude of what’s transpiring on Earth. But there’s little he can do with a stubborn sentient land. He’s not too depressed thinking about dying. He’s been alive for so many eons— _alone_ for nearly that long. It might be a new adventure, passing on from this realm. Or there may be nothing after this.

But then that buzzing starts underneath his skin again. He can’t begin to guess what the Labyrinth is doing while she bleeds him and the others dry once more.

Another flash of light blooms over the world, but this time when Sarah opens her eyes, she’s not in the dense forest that has become her home. She’s impossibly at the center of the throne room from a harrowing adolescent nightmare. (That had been a dream. It had to have been!) Around her, leathery goblins sprawl unconscious. Even the chickens are splayed in awkward angles. She picks her way toward the throne, fingers going to the compound bow slung over her shoulder. There, on the dais at the base of the throne, lies the great and terrible Goblin King—just as beautiful as she remembered. This can’t be real. She kneels down, too frightened to touch him, but also scared that he’s not alive. Because if he _is_ real, can he help her? Can he help her family?

 _Her family_. Dread rises like bile in her throat as she remembers her loved ones. Oh, no. What’s happened to them? Are they—

Someone calls her name, and she spins around. Relief pours over her when her gaze finds Toby and her parents. She runs to them, tries to hug them all at the same time as tears burn in her eyes. They’re alive, and that’s all that matters. That’s all that’s mattered these past few months. Her parents are utterly baffled, and Toby looks around with narrowed eyes as if there’s something familiar about this place. Before she can answer the questions tumbling from all of them at once, someone else says her name.

That baritone prickles her skin with goosebumps as she turns to face her former nemesis. Jareth stands on the dais, exuding power even with shadows beneath his eyes. The goblins and chickens begin to stir, and Karen grasps Robert, pulls 11-year-old Toby close with a stifled whimper. They’d had to do tough things to survive on Earth, but this is entirely different. Sarah’s not afraid, though—not as much as her family. She knows these creatures. She’s defeated them. They have no power over her. Sucking a deep breath, she slowly crosses the room toward the magical king, head held high even as her heart pounds. Robert protests, but she ignores him. Her father has no idea, not yet.

The goblins scramble away from her, making a path as they whisper in shock. _The Girl Who Ate the Peach_. She doesn’t know what to think of the fact that they remember her when this place feels like a relic of another life.

Jareth watches her approach, eyes never wavering from her. When she stops a couple of feet from the throne, he lifts an upswept brow. “The Champion has returned,” he says. There’s no malice in his voice, merely a statement of fact. It’s enough to give Sarah hope that he might be willing to help her—help her family. Before she can respond, his gaze slides past her to the rest of the Williams. “You’ve brought others, I see.”

Sarah shakes her head. “I didn’t do this.”

He looks at her again, glance dipping to take her all in. “No,” he agrees after a beat. “This is the work of the ancient magic of the Labyrinth.”

“Why?”

His mouth quirks up in a brittle smile. “I hardly know. Not when...”

“When the world is ending,” she finishes for him. “This place, too?”

Jareth hums in agreement.

The door to the throne room crashes open, and Karen does scream this time, though she clamps a hand over her mouth. A pair of goblins dash in, mismatched armor clanking. “Your highness!” one of them yells. “We’ve been infiltrated!”

Jareth gives them a flat expression. “Yes,” he says a hint of long-suffering. “I’m aware.” He casts a pointed look in Sarah’s direction.

Both of the goblins start at seeing her there, but then the one who spoke bows again at the king. “No, your highness. There are—” he leans forward and whispers loudly, “—other _mortals_. Hundreds in the Labyrinth!”

Jareth stiffens. “What is this?” 

He glances at Sarah as if she might know the answer, but she shakes her head. Lips pulled in a tight line, he conjures a crystal and studies its depths. Sarah catches something in it, a faint swirl of color that almost solidifies into an image, but doesn’t quite. She thinks it’s a trick of the light. 

Jareth’s frown deepens, and then he sighs. “Very well.” He holds the orb out toward Sarah. “She’d like a word.”

“Who—?” 

But he’s dropping the crystal, and Sarah reaches out to catch it on instinct. Everything melts away to nothing, black so pure that her heart climbs her throat with claustrophobia. Just when she thinks she’s going to suffocate, stars wink into existence one by one in the distance, tiny blips of slowly pulsing light. 

“Daughter of the Earth Above,” comes a voice. It’s soft and overwhelming at once, feminine but overlaid with an echo of whispers. “Champion of the Earth Below. _Behold_.” 

Suddenly a history lasting eons, millions of years—no, _billions_ —overtakes her in a tidal wave. She clutches her head, screaming as more comes and comes and comes. This place, the magic that built it came into being when the universe was young, a power that was a byproduct of stars colliding, evolved on a much larger, incomprehensible scale than the beginnings of humankind. And it— _she_ —is the only one of her kind. She roamed the universe for time innumerable until she found an infant world with a residue of magic that is her. Two disparate beings grew into intelligence—those who embraced the magic and the others who rejected a dependance on it. She took the former under her protection, those who still basked in the essence of her. Thus the Labyrinth was born.

So enormous with power, she’s slumbered as mortals have forgotten their magical counterparts. Her creatures were safe under the watch of the keeper she chose to rule over them—until a Champion came to win back what she’d wished away.

Tears spill onto Sarah’s cheeks as she relives every step she took through the Labyrinth, every terrifying turn, but this time through the bleary consciousness of the magic that created it. The confusion turned anger turned awe. The invisible thread the Labyrinth tied to her when she returned Above—never forgotten as she lived out her life in blissful ignorance.

The images fade away, leaving the starry expanse. A woman stands before Sarah, beautiful, ageless with colorless hair and brows. Her eyes are mirrors to the twinkling sky. Though she’s not much taller than Sarah and just as slight in stature, there is something fathomless about her—as if she fills every inch of the endless void that surrounds them.

“Champion,” she says in that tone overlapped with murmurs. “I now make you Mother of All.”

Sarah’s pulse climbs to a rapid beat as layers of meaning unfold with the simple statement. She suddenly understands that the Labyrinth couldn’t save all of the humans, so she used Sarah as the measure to judge who to give life. The giant stone spaceship in the sky is the Labyrinth, and they will quest for a new home.

Sarah finds herself weeping for those who are left behind, and the Labyrinth smiles. “This is why it must be you,” she says. She raises her slender hands and cups Sarah’s cheeks. “Together, you will save all of my children.”

 _Together_. Sarah understands this, too, and she begins to protest, but the Labyrinth presses her lips against her forehead, and Sarah is lost again. This time it’s light, relentlessly white. Her body floats in a sea of brilliance, skin sparking with radiant power.

“You are mine,” the Labyrinth murmurs, sounding distant “Our destinies are eternally entwined.”

 _He is mine_ , the whispers add, _and bound forever to you_.

Sarah cries out when she comes to in the throne room on shaky hands and knees. Jareth stands before her, lip curled with dangerous warning, but it’s not aimed at her. She glances over her shoulder to find her family behind, battle ready. Robert has an arrow nocked, steel tip pointed at the King of the Goblins. Karen and Toby hold knives. Sarah lets out a laugh, but it comes out as a choked sob.

“It’s okay,” she tells them all as she rises to her feet, scrubbing a palm across her cheeks. “I’m fine.”

Robert reluctantly lowers his bow, and the rest of her family follows suit. Only then does Jareth look at her, and it’s with a wary expression.

“I should have known she’d choose you,” he says.

“What the hell is going on here?” demands Robert.

Sarah doesn’t know where to begin, but Jareth answers first. “The Labyrinth has deigned to save a few of you mortals from certain death,” he explains in a bored voice. In one blink he goes from standing near Sarah to lounging on his simple throne. “And she’s deigned to give me a queen.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Sarah says. “I don’t want it.”

He smirks at her. “Still rejecting generous gifts, I see,” he says. “By all means, make every attempt to defy her. You will discover soon enough that her will is far greater than yours.” He waves her away. “You had better show your _children_ how to navigate their new existence, Mother of All.”

Sarah grits her teeth, but he’s right. Her people need someone to help them adjust to their new reality. She casts a steely glance at the king—at the one the Labyrinth bound to her. He gives her a brittle smile in return.

She spends weeks—at least she thinks it’s that’s long; it’s impossible tell—getting people set up in homes. There’s fewer than five thousand saved, and Sarah weeps again for the billions doomed to die. No one argues when she takes charge, and she tells herself they’re merely relieved that someone has some experience in this place. In truth, though, it’s because she exudes an aura of power. She can feel it knitting into her bones, that magic that ties her forever to the Labyrinth—and to _him_.

He gives her space, doesn’t bother to even appear unannounced like he did during her trial in the Labyrinth all those years ago. She suspects that he’s just as displeased with the arrangement as she is. But the magic she’s given is unwieldy, wild, not obeying her command. Refusing to use it also proves fruitless as it seems to have a mind of its own. Her old friends have no answers for her.

And so months later, she treads the ancient stones of the castle, pushes open the thick wooden doors to the throne room. Goblins still gasp and scramble out of her way. But they also bow now, knowing the one who rules not just the mortals, but _every_ living thing. She inhales and squares her shoulders.

Jareth acknowledges her with a bare nod. “Is it that time already?”

Sarah frowns. “What time?”

“Hm.” He sits up, taking her measure with a languid glance that awakens tiny flutters in her middle. “When you concede defeat.”

Sarah tips her chin up in defiance. “I’m not giving up.”

He taps a finger against his lips. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? But you’re wrong, precious.” He smiles at the way her jaw tenses at the old nickname. “This isn’t a matter of giving up. It’s a matter of acceptance.”

“Resignation, you mean,” she counters.

He tilts his head in tacit agreement. “As ever, it’s a matter of perspective. Nothing is what it seems.” He settles back into his royal seat. “Now, what is it that my queen requires of me?”

And so begins her lessons in magic. It’s awkward and uncomfortable at first. He’s not a particularly patient teacher, and she has a tendency to lash out when she’s frustrated. They fight. But after a day or two or seven, she returns to learn how to keep from accidentally turning everyone she touches blue or from magically transporting herself to the shores of the Bog in the middle of a bath. Their banter turns less volatile over time. He’s a little stiff when she gives him an enthusiastic hug after her first success—teleporting across the throne room to his dais—but his arms come up quickly enough to prevent her from stepping immediately away. And she experiences a new feeling, different from the range of annoyance and barely-veiled exasperation. 

Things get easier between them. They still fight, but they recover faster. They’ve also made each other laugh. She’s mastering her power quickly. Time passes, though no one knows how much. She’s changing, and so are the other mortals (though she’s not sure she can call herself that anymore). It’s subtle, a sharpening of the angles in their faces. Rounded cheeks and chins becoming sculpted, the tips of their ears becoming pointed. It’s getting harder to remember what Earth was like and the modern trappings. They live simply, off the land. They sing, and that, too, is different. It’s beautiful, but it also carries _power_. One of the younger ones discovers that the plants like to be sung to, that they grow faster, _happier_. And the tune, the words come naturally as if Sarah’s people have been singing for generations. They don’t carve wood, but appease it with song so that it will form the desired shapes in gratitude.

The castle changes with Sarah’s presence. Each stone she touches slowly transforms from dilapidated and aged to smooth marble. The transformation bleeds to the other stones, and Jareth grumbles about her undue influence, but she catches the smile he tries to hide. And then she understands how thousands of years of loneliness has weighed on him, turned him into the being whom she faced as a teenager, mocking, unfeeling—and later desperate.

Then a memory—not hers—is called to the forefront of her mind, one that had gotten lost among the deluge of innumerable others. There were others like him once, full of magic and vitality. But a war for power killed thousands, and those left rejected the magic, blaming it—blaming _her_ —for their unending grief. They tore immortality, the song of life, from their hearts and built another world. Jareth alone remained true to her.

As Sarah stares at her reflection, at her now upswept brows and ears that come to a point, she realizes that the Labyrinth has found a way to restore what was cast away. She named Sarah Mother of All. And now she recalls the title she refused to hear in her vision so long ago: Jareth, the Father of the Lost.

There’s a ball tonight in one of the now vibrant green hillocks of the realm. There was no invitation, and yet all knew it. All dressed in finery, converging on the meadow lit in the dark night with streaking stars—revealed when the Labyrinth showed the true exterior of space beyond their traveling world. Sarah looks up with joy written on her face. Unlike the others, she knows that they will soon anchor. Yesterday, the Labyrinth whispered that she has found a home for them.

The crowd parts, and Jareth stands on the other end, gaze fixed on her. She walks toward him as if there is a force tugging her, but she doesn’t fight it. Not anymore. He holds a hand out to her, smile ghosting on his lips.

“Is it finally time?” he asks.

She studies his face, so beautiful, so familiar, and knows he’s been right all along. This isn’t giving up. It’s accepting a gift more generous than she or he deserves.

She places her hand in his. “It is.”

The smile he gives her is radiant. His kiss even more.

**THE END**


End file.
